UPDATE: Corinth man accused in letter plot faces new hearing Friday

OXFORD – Paul Kevin Curtis faces a Friday hearing on his bond and government charges that he threatened President Obama and others with poison-laced letters.
Curtis of Corinth appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander about 11:50 a.m. today in an initial hearing, with his attorney Christi R. McCoy by his side.
He was arrested Wednesday after an FBI and local investigation into letters someone sent allegedly containing the poison, ricin.
Alexander asked Curtis if he understood what was going on in today’s proceeding.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said to her with a firm voice.
Before the hearing, the government issued a news release with documents formally charging him with two counts of intentionally mailing threats to public officials. Besides Obama, authorities claim Sen. Roger Wicker of Tupelo and Lee County Justice Judge Sadie Holland were among the alleged recipients.
Curtis, 45, was brought to court by marshals and entered the small courtroom in leg shackles and chained handcuffs.
He wore black jogging pants with white stripes down each side and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a Johnny Cash logo with orange flames drawn at the top.
He acted normally during the 10-minute proceeding, but his attorneys or prosecutors, or both, will ask for his psychological evaluation as soon as possible.
Oxford attorney Hal Neilson will assist McCoy with Curtis’ defense. Prosecutors today were assistant U.S. attorneys John Marshall Alexander and Chad Lamar.
U.S. Attorney Felicia Adams appeared briefly in the hall outside the courtroom but did not attend the initial hearing.
His attorney, Chrisi R. McCoy, tells the Associated Press Curtis “maintains 100 percent that he did not do this.” She says she knows him and his family and that it is hard for her to believe the charges against him.
• For more details, come back here or read Friday’s Daily Journal.
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EARLIER POST
OXFORD – Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, suspected in sending poison-laced letters to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker and Lee County Justice Court Judge Sadie Holland, faces initial charges today in Oxford with defense attorney Christi R. McCoy at his side.
Curtis’ appearance is scheduled at 11:50 a.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander. Booneville native McCoy met with him after he was processed by the U.S. Probation Service, then dealt with by other agencies before the hearing.
The formal complaint against Curtis states that there is probable cause to believe that Curtis “knowingly and willfully” mailed a letter “containing (a) threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States” and others.
According to the complaint, the three letters to Obama, Wicker and Holland contained the same verbiage, referencing “Missing Pieces,” which Curtis had previously identified online as a novel he was writing about missing body parts. The text of each letter was the same:
“No one wanted to listen to me before.
There are still missing pieces.
Maybe I have your attention now.
Even if that means someone must die.
This must stop.
To see a wrong and not expose it,
is to become a silent partner in its continuance.
I am KC and I approved this message.”
The complaint also revealed that Wicker had previously received “multiple communications” to his office from Curtis and that U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee of Tupelo received an email in December 2011 from Curtis that referenced “Missing Pieces.”

Curtis in 2000 was fired from his position with a cleaning service at North Mississippi Medical Center, which he accused in social media posts of being involved in the sale of body parts conspiracy he envisioned.
McCoy associate Hal Neilson, a former FBI official, will assist with Curtis’ defense.
They and the government are expected immediately to seek psychological evaluations of Curtis.

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BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CORINTH — A Mississippi man accused of mailing letters with suspected ricin to national leaders believed he had uncovered a conspiracy to sell human body parts on the black market and claimed “various parties within the government” were trying to ruin his reputation.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested Wednesday at his home in Corinth, near the Tennessee state line.

Authorities were waiting for definitive tests on intercepted letters that were addressed to President Barack Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. Preliminary field tests can often show false positives for ricin. Ricin is derived from the castor plant that makes castor oil. There is no antidote and it’s deadliest when inhaled.

An FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press said the two letters were postmarked Memphis, Tenn.

Both letters said: “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”

It was not immediately known what charges Curtis faced. He was being held in the Lafayette County jail in Oxford, a booking officer, who declined to give his name, said Thursday.

The letters had Washington on edge in the days after the Boston Marathon bombing. As authorities scurried to investigate three questionable packages discovered in Senate office buildings Wednesday, reports of suspicious items also came in from at least three senators’ offices in their home states. The items were found to be harmless.

In Corinth, a city of about 14,000, police cordoned off part of a subdivision where Curtis lived. At least five police cars were on the scene, but there didn’t appear to be any hazardous-material crews and no neighbors were evacuated. The one-story, single-family home is similar to the others in the neighborhood, with red brick with white trim.

Neighbors, who said Curtis kept to himself and did not seem violent, were concerned by the idea that someone was making poison in the house that sits so close to their bedrooms and front yards.

Next-door neighbor Kayla Latch, 18, lives with her mother and her two brothers and said they were worried that toxic chemicals could be released when investigators enter the home.

“I’m afraid they might open it up and it (poison) might go into the air and hurt someone,” Latch said.

Latch said Curtis lived with a woman and a teenage boy when he first moved in, but they appeared to have moved out.

Matthew Latch, Kayla’s brother, said he would sometimes hear Curtis playing his guitar outside the house late at night.

Ricky Curtis, who said he was Kevin Curtis’ cousin, said the family was shocked by the news of the arrest. He described his cousin as a “super entertainer” who impersonated Elvis and numerous other singers.

“We’re all in shock. I don’t think anybody had a clue that this kind of stuff was weighing on his mind,” Ricky Curtis said in a telephone interview.

Ricky Curtis said his cousin had written about problems he had with a cleaning business and that he felt the government had not treated him well, but he said nobody in the family would have expected this. He said the writings were titled, “Missing Pieces.”

A MySpace page for a cleaning company called The Cleaning Crew confirms that they “do windows” and has profile photo of “Kevin Curtis, Master of Impressions.” A YouTube channel under the name of Kevin Curtis has dozens of videos of him performing as different famous musicians, including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Kid Rock.

“As far as him being anti-government, I’m not going to say that, but he had some issues with some stuff that happened with his cleaning business,” the cousin said.

Multiple online posts on various websites under the name Kevin Curtis refer to the conspiracy he claimed to uncover when working at a local hospital from 1998 to 2000.

The author wrote the conspiracy that began when he “discovered a refrigerator full of dismembered body parts & organs wrapped in plastic in the morgue of the largest non-metropolitan healthcare organization in the United States of America.”

That description fits North Mississippi Medical Center, and in 2001, Curtis sued the hospital. The lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.

Curtis wrote that he was trying to “expose various parties within the government, FBI, police departments” for what he believed was “a conspiracy to ruin my reputation in the community as well as an ongoing effort to break down the foundation I worked more than 20 years to build in the country music scene.”

In one post, Curtis said he sent letters to Wicker and other politicians.

“I never heard a word from anyone. I even ran into Roger Wicker several different times while performing at special banquets and fundraisers in northeast, Mississippi but he seemed very nervous while speaking with me and would make a fast exit to the door when I engaged in conversation…”

He signed off: “This is Kevin Curtis & I approve this message.”

The FBI said there was no indication of a connection between the letters and the Monday bombing in Boston that killed three people and injured more than 170. The letters to Obama and Wicker were postmarked April 8, before the marathon.

Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, said mail sent to the White House is screened at a remote site for the safety of the recipients and the general public. He declined to comment on the significance of the preliminary ricin result, referring questions to the FBI.

At a House hearing, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe noted there had been ricin alerts since the notorious 2001 anthrax mailings and procedures are in place to protect postal employees and help track down culprits.

“Over the course of years we’ve had some situations where there have been ricin scares,” Donahoe said. “Until this date, there’s never been any actually proved that have gone through the system.”